Financial services speed up their mobile evolution

Posted by KingEclient on 28 October, 2015

When we talk about mobility in a financial services’ environment, banking entities are constantly working on their mobile side to adapt to technology-related launches and to new user-demanded functionalities.

The great majority of international Banks offer robust solutions that cover the basic needs in terms of mobility; for instance, looking up their balance sheet or checking specific transactions. Nonetheless, there is room for improvements as regards more specific functionalities, marketing, and sales.

Iterating, iterating, iterating.

Through a development philosophy based on iteration, i.e. “test & learn”, e-banking teams are adapting, with precision, to clients’ needs regarding mobile devices. A clear referent is La Caixa; pioneers in developing activity-prediction tools.

This constant evolution allows banks to take a proactive position in a mobile environment and let the client know about future tasks regarding their historic track instead of users having to plan their transferences in advance.

The same way, basic functionalities in mobile are also being optimized. For example, by registrating or accessing the portal from a smartphone, users are allowed to register in their home banking without the need to use the desktop version; or during the login process, where the terminal saves small data groups without transgressing any privacy policies. As a result, the number of clicks is reduced up to a third.

A different development, the same experience

Many users alternatively use their mobile phone explorer or their banking native apps to access to their accounts information depending on the tasks they want to carry out. Nowadays, clients expect to carry out these tasks without having to change their platform or increasing de screen size to have access to all functionalities; from here comes the need to create the most complete experience in any platform or device.

Downloadable mobile apps use a different approach and different functionalities depending on the terminal type and the software platform of each device. For instance, specific tablet apps count on specific functionalities that work better with a bigger screen size. This is one of the reasons why we should create experiences consistent with the entire device ecosystem used by the client, and not just a single device.

Communication with the user

Due to the continuous updating of different functionalities and contents, mobile banking teams should not lose sight of the communicative process with their clients. The best conversions regarding new banking functionalities are those that take into account a communication plan with the user. There they explain, in great detail, how and where they can find any functionality and what it rapports to their clients in their day to day.